


Celebrating Knowledge

by 21PilotsWithGuns



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, got a really good grade too, i handed this in as an essay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 01:53:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13694403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/21PilotsWithGuns/pseuds/21PilotsWithGuns
Summary: Usually stories start at the beginning.If that beginning lies too far in the past, it's generally advisable to skip a few uneventful millennia, maybe even sleep through a century or two. Or, maybe, not. (It quite depends on your intents and purposes, really. There are rumours about sleeping Evil and ever-vigilant Virtue somewhere out there, or maybe that was just a really nice book.)





	Celebrating Knowledge

**Celebrating Knowledge**

Usually stories start at the beginning.

If that beginning lies too far in the past, it's generally advisable to skip a few uneventful millennia, maybe even sleep through a century or two. Or, maybe, not. (It quite depends on your intents and purposes, really. There are rumours about sleeping Evil and ever-vigilant Virtue somewhere out there, or maybe that was just a really nice book.)

You might want to stick around to see what becomes of the apes that left the trees.

 

But how would you go about keeping up with the human race? Would you keep an ever watchful eye on them, gleefully observing as they create and invent, dutifully keeping track of every new thought, every new revolution that eases their lifestyle? Witnessing as this creativity enables them to grow in numbers and spread.

You, still bound to a corporeal form, can’t possibly stay with more than a handful of tribes (that would have to be living in pretty close proximity, too), but you know what your purpose is, so the only decision you have to make is: Where should you follow them to.

You could reason that the more fertile areas were as good a place as any.

There were arguments made for the story to actually start in 4004 BC.1 These arguments can be invalidated by fossils deep in the earth.

Regardless, the fifth millennium BC is a time as good as any to continue with the story, because even though you did not stray from your task by now you have well and truly lost track of them all.

But the humans travel, too. And with them words, stories, knowledge travels. And while in somebody else’s mind, for a fraction of time, the words internal combustion engine might appear and evoke stronger emotions than they ought to – these words mean very little, if anything, on their own at this place and time, definitely nothing combined and in that order – you have never been happier as around you knowledge gets exchanged on a bigger and bigger scale.

One day you, or well, the humans, will discover a name for the celebration of the exchange of traditions, experiences, religious beliefs and more that will satisfy you, but it will take centuries before anyone writes it down. Speaking of which: Shortly after they start writing their knowledge down you are forever hopelessly lost in the past, trying to catch up on all that you missed, but it’s just too much.

But you will make sure that the festivals continue, for that is what they eventually name them.

 

Of course that’s not the only way to go about this, as one could make an argument that early human “civilisation” is rather boring.

If you were of that opinion, you may only once in a while make an effort to see if they were still living in their pitiful homes and then tell them their neighbour's was definitely better and then find amusement in what happens next. And on top of that you make sure that yours is better than any of theirs. A variation of this behaviour can be applied to much of early human history, the frequency in which this is advisable strictly limited by the lack of fast transportation. At some point the need for it might become so urgent that it will be picked up in the subconscious of bookless bibliophiles. And for some reason you suddenly know that there is a place not too far away were the humans are far too chummy with each other.

 

Maybe both of these persons exist.

Maybe they meet in the midst of one of the first humble beginnings of what will once be known as a festival. Maybe one of them has seen quite a few of those by now and the other, because he was not really interested until now, has not. Maybe the one currently not beaming at everything he sees decides to not disturb the humans this time because, when looking down to his mud covered feet, between tree house homes and student loans he would much prefer the latter right now, it meant progress on a level that promised fast cars and a bed comfortable enough to spend a century in it asleep.

_ _

_ i _

Maybe, even though it would take millennia for them to truly become friends, they often visited places of knowledge together, and curiously enough, agreed on armistice.

And so the festivals continued. And at a time where the internal combustion engine had already long been invented, there all sorts of festivals took place regularly, ranging from religious to renaissance, to music.2

(They would never go to the religious ones together as they made one of them feel rather unwelcome. The other enjoyed attending until he had to admit to himself that the pride and superiority he experienced whenever he went would not be regarded too kindly by certain entities. They did visit a music festival together, Glastonbury in 1984, to see a friend perform. A friend to only one of them, as they never really liked each other’s friends. Both deny every connection to said friends brief death and consecutive resurrection. Neither of them ever went to a renaissance festival: they had lived through it and through the time that inspired it already.)

_ _

_ ii _

And in 1989 a man named Ian Wall had an idea that was, presumably, his own.3

A man shaped being is visited by an equally man shaped friend with a 63 year old black car in pristine condition. One of them does not know where they’re driving. The friend tells them towards a revolution. They end up in Edinburgh, where Wall had proposed his idea, a city, that wanted to become a city of science, was to have the world’s first science festival. Getting a concept that had evolved around arts and crafts to work to present science had evoked some scepticism. Would it work? That the festival took place in April 1989 and continued to take place in the following years settled that question. There is no world wide web, no knowledge that the universe was 13.7 billion years old, and they don’t have Dolly the Sheep4

They have, however, “a hypnotically obsessive rotating disc filled with viscous fluid and revealing patterns of smooth and turbulent flow”5and the now not-so-bookless bibliophile had to be dragged away from it by his counterpart after they received odd looks for staring at it close to 30 minutes, “A working model of a swing bridge”5 that gets explained to one gushing and one foot tapping being by ten bright eyed students. In a row.

That repeats itself with “Primary Press” a newspaper in which some primary schoolers report about the festival itself and threatens to repeat itself when they come about some secondary schools contesting in a quiz, but one of them gets a little too bored.5

He doesn’t have to fear much because he knows that by their next stop his friend will have forgotten everything. There are books. Books about space and science-fiction, specifically presented in a way that people get encouraged to read them, to learn.5

__  
iii 

They spend hours there. And the festival returns and so do they. Even as the idea spreads - first to [Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden) in 1997 with The International Science Festival in Gothenburg, later to the US3 – they keep coming back to Edinburgh, to the first one, sometimes alone, sometimes with a surprisingly acquired nephew and godson and his friends, because they are the reason that it is still taking place.

The exhibitions change over the years, they go with the times and the organizers learn from experience.

 

One of the most admired changes has to be the way they present science.

There are lecturers or, more so, entertainers on the stages, captivating their young audience with grand speeches and impressive results of minor wonders of science and technology.6

Or the scientists swarmed by groups of children, watching attentively, regarding them almost like magicians.7 One of them had learned to be a magician once, but unlike an adult audience, who would get bored once they know the tricks behind it, these children are fascinated to learn, to explore, to create.

And create, they do. There is chatter in the back of an old black car – often containing more passengers then ought to be possible – on the way back to England, those years they don’t go alone. Bags containing treasures such as “ooey gooey slime”, “Crystal Gardens”, coins coloured differently than they were not twenty-four hours ago or a dragon that seems realer than it should 6 are clutched to chests.

They still go when those kids deem themselves too old.

They go with their kids.

_ _

_ iiii _

By 2015 it can be compared to a circus, albeit one where you don’t have to practice for years to master the skills.8 The skills come with knowledge, provided  by fundamental laws, that have been in place as long as the two unlikely friends have, but are still being explored.

 

And they will make sure the exploration doesn’t end. Just as their godson made sure everything else didn’t end all those years ago, they will make sure that the excitement of acquiring and the sharing of knowledge doesn’t end.

 

1  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology>

2 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival>

3/ _i_ <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_festival>

4  <http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-21902661>

5/ _iii_ <https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12216636-400-forum-all-the-fun-of-the-fair-the-first-edinburgh-science-festival/>

6  <http://wnj.madscience.org/kids-events-nj.aspx>

7 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtxgVFW99Q8>

8  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW2p8kHaCDg>

_ ii  _ <http://www.johnnymarrplaysguitar.com/live-shows-2/1984-2/>

_iiii_ <http://www.edinburghfestivalcity.com/festivals/edinburgh-international-science-festival>

 

Inspired by [Good Omens (Gaiman & Pratchett)](https://books.google.de/books?id=B7FL6zzN_FsC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Why did i hyperlink Sweden???


End file.
